


Redemption

by strikerflynnmr



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Continuation, Conversations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 16:17:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19299304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikerflynnmr/pseuds/strikerflynnmr
Summary: Six thousand years after he was cast out of Heaven, God asked to speak with Crowley.





	Redemption

**Author's Note:**

> I had this thought that after the almost-apocalypse, there would be groups of demons and angels who were not happy that the war had been avoided. These groups would bring terror to the Earth anyway in hopes of starting something, and that rather than playing for either side, Aziraphale and Crowley would now spend their time trying to mitigate the damage done to humankind during these battles.
> 
> And then I thought: wouldn't God, after all this time, finally decide to tell Crowley what she's thought of him all along?

“Crowley,” said God.

Her voice might have come from one particular cloud. Crowley looked all around. He looked to be alone. He felt alone.

“Is that You?” he asked. No need to specify who. The only You that mattered at a time like this.

“It’s me, Crowley,” said God.

Crowley reached for his glasses, but they were not on his face. Of course they weren’t. It was just so damn bright up here, so throwing. It had been a very long time since he’d been up here as himself.

“Why are you talking to me?” he asked.

“What are you doing on Earth at this very moment?” said God.

Crowley tried to recall. He dimly remembered his own name being shouted, and the dust in the air. So much dust. He remembered only ever being so scared two other times in his life.

“Crowley. Focus,” said God.

“I’m… trying to help,” Crowley answered, heart thudding. He still had his body up here. The Almighty had taken all of him, not just his immortal soul. “I’m just trying to help them.”

“Help who?” said God.

Was She testing him? Waiting for him to answer like a demon? Why was She speaking to him at all?

“What does it matter?” asked Crowley. “I’m trying to help… someone. I don’t know. I’m just trying to help.”

She kept him waiting for awhile. But yes, She would do that.

“Why?” said God.

And now, Crowley was angry. He’d kept several cutting remarks in check already, but if the Almighty had made him into this, then this _was_ what he would be.

“Because you wouldn’t!” he shouted with everything in him. “Because you don’t, you never do! You won’t ever interfere, even to help someone. You won’t even show yourself now.”

“But I am here,” said God.

Crowley said nothing.

“Crowley, did it ever occur to you that I _am_ down there? Did it ever occur to you that I am working through you?” said God.

Crowley almost said nothing again, but then he said, “Yes. Yes, it’s occurred to me. But what’s the purpose of that? Why would any of this matter if it was just you against yourself all this time? What, are you bored up there? On your perfect cloud?”

“Does it matter to you?” said God.

“How can you ask me that? How can you look at those people suffering and ask me if it matters?” Crowley spat. “Yes, it matters! If you can’t see that, then what good are you?”

“So it matters to you,” said God.

Crowley shook his head. “Don’t play games with my mind. Just tell me why you brought me here. Why _now_? Why—?” He had to stop. His head had become too heavy and hung at the end of his neck like a prayer. Picturing this, he snapped it back up and pushed forward. “Why me? Why are you speaking to me, after all this time?”

“You have been in pain, Crowley,” said God.

“Life is pain,” Crowley sneered. “Ever heard that one? You must’ve done. Must’ve read the reviews about your own product.”

“Anger is a sin,” said God.

Crowley nearly bent over backward in how badly he reacted to this. “What are you going to do? Cast me out again? Invent a new species of demon? You—” He pointed a finger at the particular cloud, if that was even where God hid Herself. “You already told me what you thought of me. If I’m a sinner, then think about why that is! Think about what I ran from!”

“You did not run. You were cast out,” said God.

“I was. I was cast out. That may be the first true thing you have ever said.”

“You needed to be cast out, Crowley,” said God.

“Because I wasn’t good enough for you!” Crowley shouted. He was being eaten inside. The fire he’d kept subdued since he’d first learned to burn was finally free, set loose inside him the second She came knocking. “I know. I _bloody well_ know! Well, I’ll have you know that the angels you decided to keep, the ones that you’re handing commendations out to on the monthly, are the ones who have caused this! Them and every other demon you gave the cold shoulder. Every child you shut out. You did this! Was _this_ your plan?”

“You needed to be cast out, Crowley, so that things could be set right again. So that both sides could be purged of their vices and virtues. There had to be a balance. I chose you. But you needed to be free to feel your anger,” said God.

Crowley’s heart thudded. He felt a tremble in his legs and sank to his knees, more confused than ever. “I have felt anger,” he said.

“And I watched over you as you did,” said God.

“You _let_ me, you mean. You manipulated me! That’s all that you’ve ever done is manipulate everybody!” he screamed, pounding his chest. God would not take this away from him, too. She would not take his anger. She would not claim that it was yet another thing She had given him. No. He had found this for himself. It had saved him.

“A perfect world is not one thing. It is not having everybody on one side. A perfect world is balance. Your existence was given to you because you could help the others to see that. I have always loved you, Crowley,” said God.

He’d begun to weep, so he hid his face, but kept on shouting. “You don’t get to sit there! Passive! And tell me that it’s all on me! That you pull my strings and I exist to do your bidding! You put me through Hell! You _sent me_ to Hell with no reassurance. No explanation that it would all be okay. You have no right to me anymore. You don’t get to take credit for the path I found.” He wiped his eyes and stood, glaring his serpent’s eyes into that particular cloud. “Not even if you were the one who set me on it.

“And you don’t get to tell me that everything you did was justified because you _love_ me. You made me into something that cannot even feel love as I once did! What I am is your fault. What I have made myself into instead… That is all me.”

“You are more than capable of love. But you knew that. And you will learn even more,” said God.

“Not from you,” said Crowley. “You renounced me all those thousands of years ago, and now I renounce you. Whatever you have to say to me, it’s not good enough. Send me back.”

“What if I told you that I could make you an Angel again?” said God.

Crowley laughed. It sounded demonic. “What, so I can sit up there with your precious lot of gilded babysitters? So that things can go back to the way they were and we can all be happy and hold hands again? That’s not what I want, and if you loved me, you would know that already.”

He felt exhaustion creeping in, replacing his anger. A clarity quickly followed. Too quickly. In the same space as it took to sigh.

Crowley said, quietly, defeatedly, “But you do know that. So why are you saying it? Why are you telling me exactly what I want to hear? Why are you letting me hate you? If you’ve watched me, then you know I’m smart enough for you to have a conversation with me. A real one. No curtain.”

God said nothing for a very long time. Long enough for Crowley to understand that he was being shut out. He would never be told anything. He had accepted it long ago, but to have that knowledge _dangled_ in front of him so mercilessly. Even as She professed to love him, God would never, perhaps _could_ never, treat another as Her equal.

Crowley looked down at his feet. “Right,” he said, just as a flash of silver coursed throughout one particular cloud. “So send m...”

A woman appeared and approached him, walking first on top of cloud, and then on top of air. She resembled a mother. She resembled a memory.

“You are my child,” God spoke, surveying Crowley. She held his shoulders. Her touch was soft. Despite himself, Crowley found himself wishing that he could _feel_ Her, and so She put Her hand on his face. “And you understand as well as I do that this is not balance. I have tipped the scales unfairly one way. And for a time, you will tip them the other way in reaction. But then, one day, we shall come to meet in the middle again. You and I, Crowley.”

Crowley shut his eyes. “You cast me out,” he whispered, fighting every second against a sob that felt like a fist clenched tight where his throat met his chest. God’s hand swept over his brow and then underneath his eyes.

“Would you have been happy if you stayed in Heaven?” God asked him softly. “The time you spent there was always meant to be temporary. But then, so was your time in Hell. And your time on Earth was given to you so that you could find yourself, and be at peace.”

She touched his face. His hair. The mark beside his ear.

“You made me a demon,” he choked out. He could hardly open his eyes from all the grief he had held in. He had been shut up so tight. There was no opening him now. Not all the way.

“All creatures,” She said, and drew him into a hug, “are worthy of love. Especially those who have fought as hard for the light as you. You are exactly who you are meant to be.”

He clung to Her. She welcomed him with grace.

“You are so loved. You have made me so proud.” She let him finish crying. After all, he had not allowed himself to feel something properly for close to six thousand years.

“You need not think of yourself as a creature of Hell or of Heaven any longer,” She continued, still holding him warmly in Her embrace, without tears. “That time is behind you. There are new lessons for you to learn. New doors for you to open. You are my child, whatever you should choose to do with that title. And before you go, you may ask me anything.”

“A—Anything?” repeated Crowley, pulling back from God at last.

She smoothed his hair and again wiped beneath his eyes, smiling.

“Anything,” said God.

 

* * *

“Aziraphale.”

A puff of dust and smoke billowing from the rubble spoke, and Crowley appeared from within it. Aziraphale gaped.

“There you are! What happened to you? I couldn’t sense you anymore and I—I thought the worst had happened.”

“Yeah,” said Crowley, approaching with a strange demeanor, a sort of deliberateness, a calmness that was incongruent with the scene of mayhem surrounding them. “Not quite. Everything okay down here?”

“What do you mean ‘down here’? Where did you _go_ ? You were the one who wanted to interfere with these demons wreaking havoc in the first place, and then you left me here on my own! I had to hide while they had their way with the whole street, and just as I stepped out to confront them—I thought, ‘What would a proper angel do? He would stick up for what’s right!’—they all vanished! Pop! Just like that, gone, like they’d been swept off the table into the bin! And now you come _sauntering_ back over—”

Crowley did not cut Aziraphale off. Aziraphale cut himself off. Because Crowley was hugging him. Six thousand years of cohabiting the Earth together, and they had never once hugged. Oh, it was… It was _nice_ actually. Not at all like what Aziraphale had thought hugging a demon would feel like. Though, maybe just as nice as he’d thought hugging _this_ demon would feel, but that was beside the point! _Why_ was Crowley hugging him?

“ _Why_ are you hugging me?”

Crowley kept hugging him, for just a second longer. “I’m really happy to see you,” he answered. He sounded far away.

Then he drew back with a sniff, but his eyes were dry.

“W-Where are your glasses?” Aziraphale pressed, sighing and then pursing his lips, which was how Crowley _really_ knew he was in for a long night of explanation. “Are you going to tell me any of what’s going on?”

“Yeah.” Crowley nodded down the road. “Walk with me. We have plenty of time to talk. And no need to worry about anyone from your place or my place finding us. Not anymore.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!! I get emotional about Anthony J Crowley way too often!!!!!!! Find me on tumblr at glowstickhaloboy.tumblr.com


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